I assume it also depends on if they are using the laptop speakers or some standalone ones. I'm guessing the cancelation tech is tuned for the onboard speakers

This depends. On my (dell) laptop, the mic is basically right between the two speakers, below the lip of the laptop. It’s possibly the worst placement you could come up with for a microphone, because it barely picks up voice, and picks up all the typing, desk noises and speaker echo in the world. But I suppose that’s not surprising from the company that thought that a webcam beneath the laptop display would be a good idea...

I really thought they had some clever software or leasing to make the picture appear as if you were looking into it because of the placement but nope...just a nose cam.

Yeah that would make sense

Teams is good, Slack is good, Zoom is good. Which ones are bad?

Google hangouts is the worst in my experience. Bringing external people in who aren’t used to google meets are always surprised. We buy everyone nice microphones and our meeting protocols are you unmute you talk then remute when done. We have a bunch of parents so this has been a good practice no matter what.

Those are all good until they’re not. I’ve had echo and other room audio problems crop up intermittently in all three of those platforms during calls.

Interesting. I normally use the external speakers on my iMac. I have verified with a number of different people that they're not getting echo.

Yet one sees other people utterly convinced that using external speakers is bad, bad, bad.

That may explain it.

The most common problem I see is not echo, but software audio ducking that happens as a result of using onboard speakers and mic.

Some people have a hard time realizing that they're interrupting someone else because that other person's audio is getting ducked while the laptop prioritizes mic input over speaker output - with the intent to reduce echo.

Almost. The laptop of the person being interrupted is essentially muting its mic temporarily to avoid sending an echo of the interrupter. You could say it's prioritizing its speaker over its mic.

Basically, of all the ostensibly unmuted mics, only the one with the loudest human is truly unmuted.

It's closer to half-duplex than full-duplex. Full-duplex with no artifacts requires no echo cancellation which requires headphones.

What does the term "duck" mean in this context? I'm not sure what you mean.

“Ducking” refers to lowering volume so that other audio can play on top of it. When an announcer speaks over a song in the radio, or when Siri lowers your music so she can talk over it - that kind of thing.

Try talking while they are also talking. You'll see the problem.

It's easy to have conversations with friends on discord where 3-4 people are talking at once all with headphones. However this has never worked on a zoom or hangout with less techy family members or work colleagues using ext. speakers.

That may be part of it. On calls that I'm on people generally don't talk over each other.